It’s creepy how old she’s getting… (also: damn, I’m busy!)

I’ve been going through a severely A.D.D.-filled last several weeks, y’all.

I’m probably not going to make the deadline I’d set for myself for a major project I’ve been working on, and it’s been stressing me out… I’ve been trying to find a second part time job. I’ve been trying to keep track of all the designs I need to work on for immediate profit and long-term pattern book purposes. Then, in the middle of all that, my brain decides that I’m going to write the next great American book series and begins spewing out thousands of words. This doesn’t even include the fact that school starts back up for me at the end of this month.

And through all this, there is my daughter.

Siobhan has been a trooper, all things considered, as it’s probably not the easiest thing in the world being the kid of lower-middle class (and I mean low, damn this economy…) parents, at least one of whom is semi-agoraphobic due to severe social anxiety disorder. Between finances and phobia, we don’t get out much lately. She’s also entering (and by entering, I mean pole-vaulting into) that hormonal phase that happens around two or three years old, where they have all the opinions of a 16-year-old, and similar delivery methods, if not the vocabulary… most of the time. This results in a lot of hair-pulling, knockdown, bawling, touch-wood-we-live-through-the-day screaming matches between her and her parents. While I have had previous toddler experience, it dropped off sharply at two-and-a-half, so this is new territory for me as well. I’m guilty of falling into the threatening/yelling/count-to-three-before-(insert punishment here) trap, from examples set for me as a child, and that conflicts with all the parenting classes and child psychology courses I took in college. She’s old enough to tell us she hates us, but not old enough to quite understand that what she’s doing is wrong and what to do to avoid being in trouble. Although, she’s certainly on top of the whole “It’s perfectly okay so long as I don’t get caught…” concept. As well as the “Play my parents against each other and side with whomever wins and will give me what I want…” approach to parental negotiations. This, as you can imagine, places a great deal of stress on our family when we’re already struggling with money problems.

The one thing that seems to bring the three of us together, in the rare moments when we’re not all trying to kill each other in the face, is geekdom. Siobhan’s father taught her to use his arcade-style fight stick for Super Street Fighter IV when she was less than one year old, regardless of skill level or tendency to button-mash. At two years old, Siobhan was “guiding” herself around our apartment in California by “Six-Axis” on a spare PS3 controller, tilting and weaving with the controls held correctly in her tiny hands. At three years old, Siobhan has conquered the concept of the Wii Remote. The games her father gets to play as a perk of his job for a local software company, Siobhan is well-versed in and often stands next to us demanding to look at the map or the list of companions/pets, etc.

Her precociousness doesn’t end with video game technology.

I have trouble sleeping, most nights, and this results in me taking care of any midnight terrors she has before I finally pass out at what-the-fuck A.M. My husband winds up going to bed hours before I do and rising as many hours before I do in the mornings, taking the “first shift” with our child. Today, I woke up in the 6 o’clock hour, right before Siobhan did. Obviously unable to simply ignore that she was awake and go back to sleep (damn those parental ethics…), I let Xander sleep in and got her up and breakfasted. Her surprise was a picture.

[I open her door.]

Me: Good morning, honey.

Siobhan: (stunned silence for a minute, blinking at me.) Oh. Hi, Mommy. (toddles out into the living room, wobbly and still waking up, and flops face-first over the arm of the futon-couch. words comically muffled by cushion.) Daddy still sleeping?

Me: Yes. Daddy’s still sleeping. (Minor grief with diaper changing/potty training nonsense, frustration with breakfast/mess, etc. Finally get her situated with morning cartoons and Cheerios so I can get some dishes done.)

Siobhan: Mommy?

Me: Yes, dear?

Siobhan: (points at clock) You don’t wake up until little hand on number ten! It’s number 6!

Me: I know. Mommy’s very sleepy.

Siobhan: (stares thoughtfully, then lowers eyebrows at me, very sternly) Mommy. You go lie down, get Daddy. You go to work, I have cereal, Daddy go to work, and Mina and Pepper are cats so they don’t do anything.

Me: I see. (not really.) So you’re going to eat your cereal and then go play in your room so Mommy can go back to sleep, huh?

Siobhan: No, Mommy. Siobhan watch Caillou and make eggs in kitchen and Mommy and Daddy sleep.

Me: No, Siobhan. I don’t think so.

Siobhan: (Long, pensive look, and theatrical sigh.) Well… It was worth a try. (Goes back to sullenly, methodically eating cereal.)